Here are some issues Rob is passionate about … What are you passionate about? Get involved and let Rob know, volunteer today and make a difference.

Family Values

Raised with strong Christian values and now with the greatest desire to provide the best possible world for his children to grow up in, Rob is convinced that we have a desperate need to bring our country back to those core principles upon which this great nation was founded. His opinion is that we need the government to protect us from each other and leave the raising of our families to us. When we hear the government of Montana (yes, Montana) is requiring its schools to teach sex education to kindergartners and to introduce the topic of lifestyles that have absolutely nothing to do with why we are sending our children to school, Rob says our government is out of control. Not only are we kicking God out of everything but we are replacing this void with nonsense and cultural propaganda to move our society to a point which a very small percentage of self-appointed “I know better than you” experts feel we should go. It is time for this to stop and to elect leaders that will have the gumption to stand up to these experts, and Rob will do just that.

Limited Government

Rob believes the size and scope of our government is out of control. We have gotten a long way from the ideals of our founding fathers, most notably the architect of our constitution, James Madison, who considered the necessity of government a misfortune. Government’s primary responsibility is to protect us from each other and from our common enemies. Sometimes through compassion but often for pursuit of power we have gradually drifted from the principles of government upon which we were founded. Rob does not believe in anarchy but believes we need to try to find our way back to the level of freedom our founders craved, risked their lives for, and won after much bloodshed. In our businesses and in our lives we are seeing government ever-encroaching further and further upon our freedoms and liberties.

Business

Reading his biography you can immediately tell Rob’s passion for small business. One of his greatest thrills in life has been to start a business with nothing and see it bloom into something special. Rob is not against big business, but his heart is with the mom and pop shop just like his own. What we need in the capitol is someone who will fight for the rights and freedoms of small business which is the backbone of our state’s economy.

Income Tax

Rob believes we should work towards reducing the state income tax which will allow us to attract more business to Oklahoma, which in turn will help all our small businesses. However, it is clear that the citizens of Oklahoma like Rob do not want sacrifices in the level of services provided by the state or significant increases in property taxes, fees or other taxes to finance this reduction. Rob’s approach would be to work hard to find those areas of waste and those areas where savings can be found, and then translate these into lower taxes. This is the same approach Rob would use in the management of his businesses.

Health Care

Rob opposes Obamacare. The major problem with this bill is that it has no meaningful cost controls, and simply increases the size of a pool that is today obscenely abused. Having been in pharmacy for over 20 years Rob can tell you that the Medicaid system needs overhauled, but the new healthcare bill simply expands this broken system to millions more people. It sounds nice on paper, but it would also sound nice for the government to buy everyone a new car, but in a free society this is not the way it works. Simply what Obamacare is, is a power play by those in charge to purchase millions of votes by making more of our population dependent on government. That being said Rob realizes our health care system needs work, and it is unfortunate that we probably cannot go back to buyer-pay which would correct many of the issues. For Rob personally he has seen many patients, primarily children, who have dropped thru the cracks of the system while those that are cheating the system widen those cracks. Our healthcare system needs to be fixed from the bottom up, weeding out those that are cheating the system, and closing the cracks that exist especially for our children.

Welfare

Rob is a compassionate conservative, but he knows the system is broken. Just drive thru the streets of Memphis to realize that our Welfare system is often creating more harm than good. Rob recently heard Dr. Ben Carson speak, and he encourages you to do the same, for Ben, one of, if not, the top pediatric neurosurgeon in the country, firmly believes that if his mother had not avoided the welfare system during his childhood he would not have gotten to where he is today. Certainly Ben’s mother had every excuse, being illiterate with no father to help raise her children; however, she instinctively knew that the system was broken and she did not want her children trapped in the system as she had seen so many other people trapped. What is even more unfortunate about our welfare system is that it is often nothing short of social slavery, keeping millions of our citizens down for the sake of power. Some of those in power do not seem to mind stealing the American Dream from millions of our people so that they remain in power. Rob says we can remain compassionate, we can continue to give a hand up and not a hand out, but at the same time we can start giving those trapped in the system a shot at being that person they know deep down inside they can be.

Education

Rob is a proponent for school choice; however, he might disagree with some of his Republican friends when he says that almost all our teachers in the public schools are great educators. Certainly we need to find ways to decrease the cost of our education, which can be done, but we need to stop bashing our teachers because of a product which is often out of their control. Rob believes we need to have an education system where our best educators can rise to the top both professionally and financially as happens in the private sector, but as we move forward with these ideas we need to make sure we are allowing our teachers to teach. Our goal should be to transform Oklahoma schools into the best education that can be had in America, and the way to do this is to start admitting what the problem is. The problem in many respects are parents. It is time we understand that our schools are not like microwave ovens, where we toss our children in, press the popcorn button, and they come out ready for college. Parents have to play a part, and most parents do, but the small percentage that do not brings down the system for everyone. We need to be more honest about what makes education work, we need to require parent involvement when it makes sense, and we need to act decisively for those parents and children that do not respect our education system. As in many other areas we need to throw off this shackle of entitlement and this thought that school is a right, and approach our opportunity to attend school as the privilege and honor that it is.

Tough on Crime

Like all Oklahomans Rob thinks we should be tough on crime, especially when it comes to sex crimes and crimes against children. But most importantly we need to modify our prison system so that criminals desire to rehabilitate not only for the sake of rehabilitation but to avoid returning to prison. But to embed in prisoners the fear of returning to prison we need to make our prison system one which a person avoids at all costs. Rob believes we should move our prison system to a self sustaining entity with 12 hour work days. The work would be hard labor not replacing laborers on our roads or elsewhere, but hard labor used to do all those things for our prisons that we are currently outsourcing. Having taught college courses in the federal prison system Rob is for teaching knowledge and skills to our prisoners, but not until they earn it through years of tough, hard labor. Prison should not be a picnic, or a chance to enter a weigh lifting program, but should be a place filled with sweat and tears, and memories of long, hard days of grueling work.